Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier eBook

CHAPTER VII.

Native superstitions.—­Charming a bewitched woman.—­Exorcising ghosts
from a field.—­Witchcraft.—­The witchfinder or ’Ojah.’—­Influence of
fear.—­Snake bites.—­How to cure them.—­How to discover a thief.—­Ghosts
and their habits.—­The ‘Haddick’ or native bone-setter.—­Cruelty to
animals by natives.

The natives as a rule, and especially the lower classes,
are excessively superstitious. They are afraid
to go out after nightfall, believing that then the
spirits of the dead walk abroad. It is almost
impossible to get a coolie, or even a fairly intelligent
servant, to go a message at night, unless you give
him another man for company.

A belief in witches is quite prevalent, and there
is scarcely a village in Behar that does not contain
some withered old crone, reputed and firmly believed
to be a witch. Others, either young or old are
believed to have the evil eye; and, as in Scotland
some centuries ago, there are also witch-finders and
sorcerers, who will sell charms, cast nativities,
give divinations, or ward off the evil efforts of wizards
and witches by powerful spells. When a wealthy
man has a child born, the Brahmins cast the nativity
of the infant on some auspicious day. They fix
on the name, and settle the date for the baptismal
ceremony.

I remember a man coming to me on one occasion from
the village of Kuppoorpuckree. He rushed up to
where I was sitting in the verandah, threw himself
at my feet, with tears streaming down his cheeks, and
amid loud cries for pity and help, told me that his
wife had just been bewitched. Getting him somewhat
soothed and pacified, I learned that a reputed witch
lived next door to his house; that she and the man’s
wife had quarrelled in the morning about some capsicums
which the witch was trying to steal from his garden;
that in the evening, as his wife was washing herself
inside the angana, or little courtyard appertaining
to his house, she was seized with cramps and shivering
fits, and was now in a raging fever; that the witch
had been also bathing at the time, and that the water
from her body had splashed over this man’s fence,
and part of it had come in contact with his wife’s
body—­hence undoubtedly this strange possession.
He wished me to send peons at once, and have the witch
seized, beaten, and expelled from the village.
It would have been no use my trying to persuade him
that no witchcraft existed. So I gave him a good
dose of quinine for his wife, which she was to take
as soon as the fit subsided. Next I got my old
moonshee, or native writer, to write some Persian
characters on a piece of paper; I then gave him this
paper, muttering a bit of English rhyme at the time,
and telling him this was a powerful spell. I told
him to take three hairs from his wife’s head,
and a paring from her thumb and big toe nails, and
at the rising of the moon to burn them outside the
walls of his hut. The poor fellow took the quinine
and the paper with the deepest reverence, made me
a most lowly salaam or obeisance, and departed
with a light heart. He carried out my instructions
to the letter, the quinine acted like a charm on the
feverish woman, and I found myself quite a famous
witch-doctor.